KARACHI: Police on Sunday arrested a lady doctor of a private hospital in Gulistan-i-Jauhar in a case pertaining to an attempted murder of an infant girl who had been paralysed after she was allegedly given a wrong dose of an injection on April 6.

“Sharea Faisal police have detained Dr Sobia of Darul Sehat Hospital in the infant girl’s paralysis case,” said area SHO Safdar Mashwani.

Subsequently, the lady doctor’s custody was handed over to the women’s police station, added the officer.

The Sharea Faisal police had registered a case (FIR 354/2019) on a complaint of the infant’s father, Qaiser Ali, under sections 324 (attempted murder), 337 (Shajjah: causing any hurt) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

According to the FIR, on April 6 Mr Ali took his nine-month-old twin daughters to the hospital for treatment of diarrhoea.

It stated that one of his daughters, Nashwa, was allegedly administered with an overdose of potassium chloride (KCL) through an injection although it was supposed to be administered through a drip and not intravenously.

Minutes after she was given the injection, the child’s lips turned blue and she started having trouble in breathing. She was moved to the intensive care unit (ICU) and was administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for 45 minutes, after which the breath was restored. She was then put on a ventilator.

After the infant was taken off the ventilator on April 12, doctors informed the father that she “may have suffered a brain injury” because of the CPR performed on her for 45 minutes.

The FIR stated that a subsequent CT scan revealed that due to lack of oxygen to the brain, the child’s hands, feet, eyes and mouth had been paralysed.

At present the infant girl is being treated at the Liaquat National Hospital.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2019